News and talk of interest to Russian Jews

August 31, 2009

Victor Chebrikov to Yuri Andropov: Memorandum on Sen. Edward Kennedy

Time magazine men of the year, January of 1984.

Forbes:

Ted Kennedy's Soviet GambitPeter Robinson, 08.28.09,
12:01 AM ET

Picking
his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown
open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times,
came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor
Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri
Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward
Kennedy.

"On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen.
Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was
in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former
Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged Tunney to
convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov."

Kennedy's message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo.
Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In
return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in
challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. "The only real
potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and
Soviet-American relations," the memorandum stated. "These issues,
according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most
important of the election campaign."

Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.

First he offered to visit Moscow. "The main purpose of the meeting,
according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with
explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be
better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA."
Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to
brush up their propaganda.

Then he offered to make it possible for Andropov to sit down for a
few interviews on American television. "A direct appeal ... to the
American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of
attention and interest in the country. ... If the proposal is
recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about
suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television
companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow
for the interviews. ... The senator underlined the importance that this
initiative should be seen as coming from the American side."

Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time--and
that they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.

Kennedy's motives? "Like other rational people," the memorandum
explained, "[Kennedy] is very troubled by the current state of
Soviet-American relations." But that high-minded concern represented
only one of Kennedy's motives.

"Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in
1988," the memorandum continued. "Kennedy does not discount that during
the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to
lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate
president."

Kennedy proved eager to deal with Andropov--the leader of the Soviet
Union, a former director of the KGB and a principal mover in both the
crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the suppression of the
1968 Prague Spring--at least in part to advance his own political
prospects.

In 1992, Tim Sebastian published a story about the memorandum in the London Times. Here in the U.S., Sebastian's story received no attention. In his 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, historian Paul Kengor reprinted the memorandum in full. "The media," Kengor says, "ignored the revelation."

"The document," Kengor continues, "has stood the test of time. I
scrutinized it more carefully than anything I've ever dealt with as a
scholar. I showed the document to numerous authorities who deal with
Soviet archival material. No one has debunked the memorandum or shown
it to be a forgery. Kennedy's office did not deny it."

Why bring all this up now? No evidence exists that Andropov ever
acted on the memorandum--within eight months, the Soviet leader would
be dead--and now that Kennedy himself has died even many of the former
senator's opponents find themselves grieving. Yet precisely because
Kennedy represented such a commanding figure--perhaps the most
compelling liberal of our day--we need to consider his record in full.

Doing so, it turns out, requires pondering a document in the archives of the politburo.

When President Reagan chose to confront the Soviet Union, calling it
the evil empire that it was, Sen. Edward Kennedy chose to offer aid and
comfort to General Secretary Andropov. On the Cold War, the greatest
issue of his lifetime, Kennedy got it wrong. [link]

JRT comments:

Now when the cold war over it is important to remember who fought on each side.